1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image receiving material for electrophotography for forming a reflected image and particularly to an image receiving material for electrophotography capable of forming a highly qualified toner reflected image similar to photography with respect to smoothness.
2. Description of Related Art
An electrophotographic method is an image forming method applying a photoconductive effect and electrostatic phenomenon, and the method is widely utilized in a variety of fields. The electrophotographic method has two kinds: one is to form an image on a semiconductor material itself such as zinc oxide paper; the other is to form an image by further transferring a toner image to a recording medium capable of receiving toner images. The latter, called a xerography method, is widely employed in copying machines for offices, and the image forming principle is described below.
First, electrostatic charges are placed in the dark on a photosensitive plate having a photoconductor such as selenium by using corona charge or the like, and when the charged plate is exposed to an original image, charges are dissipated only in irradiated portions to form a latent image where the charges remain. Negatively charged toners, after mixed with carriers and introduced to the latent image, are attracted to the latent image. Then, the image receiving material made of, for example, a paper is applied on the toners and the toners are transferred by heating to a recording medium to form an image on the recording medium.
In recent years, color copying machines are further widely used, and those color copying machines carry out the aforementioned method by utilizing color toners. Because the color copying machines are mostly used for copying images rather than letters, the images to be formed are sought to be clear and highly qualified. However, when color copying is made on a plain paper, clear and highly qualified images cannot be achieved. Particularly, inferiority of glossiness has been raised as a major problem. Thus, it has been sought to improve image receiving materials used for photography application.